Not one of the biographies of Gio Domenico Ottonelli mentions the fact that this complex and influential opinion maker spent part of his life in Malta. Yet in one of his lesser-known works published in 1646, Ottonelli repeatedly refers to his stay in Malta and recounts events that happened on the island or were narrated to him while he was here.

A leading Jesuit, a tireless crusader against sexual immorality and a prolific writer of 20 books, with over 7,000 published pages to his name, he is today almost forgotten, but was in his days one of the shrillest and most persistent players on the Italian cultural scene, thundering against lasciviousness in art, in the theatre, in literature, in courts, in society – anything faintly erotic that debased art.

Perhaps the target that attracted his more virulent jihads were courtesans and prostitutes (or should I say sex workers?) – the lethal enemies of mankind, the source of all evil.

Not the most feminist of observers, Ottonelli believed, genuinely and without hesitation, that nature had made women sex-crazed, greedy and manipulative, and that only a constant battle against nature could cause any woman, exceptionally, to embrace virtue; an effortless misogyny that never let him down.

It is in his book against the endemic catastrophe of whoredom that Malta features. Surprised? By then, Malta had a solid international reputation to live up to – that of being a top European hothouse of prostitution.

Such were Ottonelli’s relentless obsessions with the female demon that they often produce effects opposite to those intended, both in our perception of the author, and about the unspoken aims of his crusade.

Was it horror at the pitfalls of female sexuality, or was it a morbid fascination with its forbidden pleasures that turned his crusade so manic? Did he protest, or did he protest too much? Was he battling the vicious wiles of loose women, or was he disclosing to everyone that he could not, for an instant, distance his mind from the yearnings of the flesh?

He certainly had the powers of lust sizzling his brain, indelible and ever-present – a one-track mind trapped inside its own conflicts. The boundaries between the almost mystical and the almost prurient can at times be permeable indeed.

I will cruise briefly through Ottonelli’s book, Alcuni buoni avvisi e casi di coscienza intorno alla pericolosa conversazione da proporsi a chi conversa poco modestamente, published in Florence in 1646, a hefty volume over 400 pages long, crammed with real-life stories on the pervasive evils of loose women and the tools Ottonelli advertises to vanquish them.

This book parallels Della pericolosa conversazione con le donne, ò poco modeste, ò ritirate, ò cantatrici, ò accademiche – all derogatory adjectives when in the feminine gender. Most of the time the book reads like a pained indictment of the XX chromosome and an awkward mixture of soft porn, voyeurism and mystic energies. They don’t cohabit easily.

Ottonelli was born on April 22, 1581, in Fanano, near Modena, to a noble family which had seen better times. He joined the Jesuit order in 1603 and took his final vows in 1621. Up to his death on March 14, 1670, he chaired the Marian congregation of artists in Florence.

Malta had a solid international reputation – that of being a top European hothouse of prostitution

He travelled widely throughout Italy (and to Malta), acquiring fame as a fiery and inconvenient preacher, a castigator of lewd painters and sculptors, and an uncompromising crusader against the presence of women on stage, and against gaming and betting.

Ottonelli’s most renowned work remained a classic, still in print today. In collaboration with the prominent painter Pietro da Cortona, in 1652 he published his Trattato della pittura e scultura. Uso et abuso loro.

The book, through numerous historical and practical examples, aimed at forming a truly Christian conscience in painters, sculptors and patrons of the arts, exhorting them never to transgress the strictest boundaries of decency and chastity – read nudity – in their lives and in their works. A sad fate awaited the work, so influential in its times – it fails to get even one solitary mention in the index of a standard work on the Jesuits and art.

Ottonelli’s evidence is often episodic, though he vouches for its accuracy: “In October 1636, when I was in Malta, just after the election of Grand Master [Lascaris] Castellar [June 16, 1636], I came to know of this case that had just happened.” Two knights confronted each other in mortal enmity because of a wretched young woman named Luigina. Lascaris, coming to know of this, ordered the woman to be deported from Malta.

Two illustrious Grand Crosses intervened, begging the Grand Master to countermand the order. To which the wise old man replied: I will tell you, my lords, my views, and then I will follow your advice. If a father had to see his son holding a dagger threatening to kill himself, shouldn’t he act instantly and order the dagger be taken off his hands? Yes, surely.

Now I am the father, and see that my sons want to take their own lives because of that worthless woman, who is the diabolical and infernal dagger. I believe I have a duty to order that the blade be immediately seized from their hands.

I know well that you, my lords, have come to beg me, coerced by the pressures of friends. They have done their part, and now I will do mine as a good father. Would you advise me otherwise?

They answered: no, and left, impressed by the zeal of the Grand Master.  

But wait. Shortly later some “galantuomini” went to the Grand Master with medical certificates that the woman could not travel as this would endanger her health. The Grand Master lost his temper and, from loving father, turned into severe judge: I will have her whipped.

To his chief minister he said: Signor N, I take back my instructions to spare her the whip. And addressing the head of police, he ordered: if she does not leave when the galleys sail, I will personally pay for the donkey on which she will be flogged.

Having heard these threats, the frightened messengers left the Palace, and no one else found the courage to plead for the woman. She sailed from Malta with little hope of ever coming back.

Ottonelli does not use the Italian form of Gran Maestro, but rather Gran Mastro, closer to the Maltese Gran Mastru. The mention of the donkey refers to people condemned to be whipped being seated on and tied to donkeys. With their back bared they were flogged at various principal street corners.

Ottonelli links this to other stories recounted to him in Malta. A man, in Tripoli for 18 years, told a Commendatore that when two janissaries fight over a woman, their commander orders her to be drowned, reasoning that it is better to lose a woman than any man. And when the Turks captured Manfredonia in 1620, two of them ended fighting over who would take possession of a lovely young girl.

The Pascha, to end the fight, personally lopped off the head of the innocent girl. This, Ottonelli observes, is the right way to deal with prostitutes: get them out of the way, if not by death, at least by banishment, when they cause disorders or are particularly obnoxious and unusually scandalous.

To illustrate the opposite option, that it is possible to resist the entrapments laid out to wholesome Christians by dissolute women, Ottonelli resorts to another example from Malta. A young knight of St John, from Siena, lived in Malta, against the advice of his uncle, a man of great holiness.

“What, you are going to Malta? That will be your downfall, the Lord be with you.” In 1633, the young knight had to leave Malta for Syracuse where he lodged in a building to which some immoral guests invited a beautiful prostitute. They sent her to the knight’s bedroom to tempt him, but never did he waver in his chastity, however close the wretched woman came.

Urged again, she returned to his room, adding shamelessness to seduction, and tried to ravish him more lasciviously than ever. The youth fled in panic, as from a burning oven, leaving behind his cloak and hat, wearing only his doublet. It was night and he had nowhere to go, so he lingered in the streets reciting the rosary.

After dawn he headed for the Jesuit college where he asked to confess, but refused to take communion, as if he had committed some unpardonable sin. The rector consoled him and encouraged him to receive the Eucharist, and even offered to lodge him at the college, where he stayed for some days, tranquil in spirit and with untold satisfaction.

The greed of Maltese sex workers shocked Ottonelli; they only lived to hoard money and worldly goods, scrounged off guilty lovers who they made dependent on their carnal services by cunning wiles. The victims were trapped by the men of whom the whores were madly in love. Pimps took from the women all they had milked from their clients, and often they ended destitute.

A popular song in Malta and elsewhere says that when one woman has two lovers, one was the provider, the other the beau; one disburses, the other gathers; with the first she is avaricious, with the other she is prodigal. With both she is shameless and in need of repentance.

But repentance is difficult for Maltese prostitutes. In 1637, the confessor of the Grand Master, an aged and wise Jesuit (Fr Giacomo Cassia, SJ), told Ottonelli that a renowned courtesan who had converted was among his penitents. To ensure she would not revert to her old depravity, the priest withheld absolution for five months, finally absolving her on September 8, Our Lady of Victories. Shortly after, she was back on the highway to sin, in carnal conversation with other notables.

The book reads like an awkward mixture of soft porn, voyeurism and mystic energies

The same confessor also told Ottonelli about another celebrated prostitute in Malta who was hit by a raging illness. On the point of death she sent for the Jesuit to confess. As the doctors certified she would soon be dead, he absolved her publicly. But God prolonged her life and she reacquired her health, only to return immediately to trading her body.

Ottonelli mentions the carnival festivities of 1636 in Malta when the camiscelle were held. He explains that in Malta this refers to people going around wearing masks and fancy costumes.

A masked prostitute, in a festive and highly-spirited mood, was horsing around with her lover through Valletta when a grievous apoplexy suddenly struck her down. She fainted, losing all her strength, unable to stand on her feet. Instantly lifeless, she could not be comforted by the sacraments, or even show any sign of contrition.

The news of her instant death spread far and wide, and caused panic among women of depraved life. And some actually abandoned that shameless and outrageous career.

Ottonelli observed that the women of Malta, Syracuse, Messina and Catania all share the fashion of covering their whole head and body with a wide and long mantle. This was used for love trysts in crowded churches.

A young girl had agreed with her lover to pretend she had got lost in the crowds inside a church. During a solemn religious feast, she had gone with her mother to church, where she feigned she had gotten separated from her in the crush of that huge gathering.

She met her lover at the agreed place, and, having satisfied her carnal cravings, returned home, affecting anger at her mother for having abandoned her in that frightful crowd. The dissolute girl, Ottonelli observes, proved St Augustine right when he lamented that “frequently they choose churches for the gratification of their lust”.

Ottonelli’s book throws light on an Italian word for prostitute, but seemingly used only in Malta. At least four times he repeats that in Malta, prostitutes are called chirazze. I have not found that usage anywhere in Italy. The knight Opitio Guidotti actually sketched Maltese chirazze in his 1600 manuscript.

We might as well round off with some comic relief, leaping at you from Boccaccio.

In 1637, Ottonelli heard in Malta how a gentleman and a cloistered nun had fallen in love. Their stealthy conversations were no­where near enough to satisfy her lust, so he agreed to enter the convent at night, squeezing in through the filthy sewers.

When he emerged inside, decked in excrement, he stank sickeningly, and the best the nun could do was to lock him up in her cell and dab him all over with perfumes. While they were satisfying their sfrenata passione, the matins bell rang, the nun dressed in a hurry and went down for prayers, leaving him alone in pitch darkness.

Still disgusted by the crappy stench, he ransacked her cabinet for more perfume, found a small bottle and rubbed its contents all over his face. Except that it was an ink bottle that he had got hold of. When the nun returned from matins and saw him all blacked out, she believed the devil had appeared to her, and fainted. In the commotion that ensued, other nuns rushed to her cell, arrested the sacrilegious gentleman and handed him over to the authorities for the just punishment he deserved.

There are various other ‘Maltese’ episodes in Ottonelli’s book. Does it add anything to our knowledge of Maltese history? Not to history with a capital H. But it enriches our store of micro-history, on which ultimately all macro-history relies.

We get to see better how social interactions functioned, what Ottonelli damned as the raw passions of mankind, the hierarchies, the weaknesses of men and the predatory evil of women, at a time when historians found it quite irrelevant to record them.

When the ugly riots against the Jesuits broke out in Malta shortly later, in carnival 1639, Ottonelli had just left the island. The younger knights rebelled against an order by Grand Master Lascaris that banned courtesans from the auberges during the carnival theatricals.

The knights, quite rightly, blamed the Jesuits’ influence on the Grand Master for this vexatious inroad into their right to debauchery. Egged on by the whores, they raided the Jesuit college in Valletta with untold violence, destroyed everything they found inside it, and harried all the terrified fathers onto a boat which they forced to sail instantly to Sicily.

I can just guess Padre Ottonelli’s barely-concealed gloating, nudging anyone who cared to listen: I told you so.